Waking on Azuremyst Isle
by cmccrzy
Summary: A draenei hunter wakes after the crash of the Exodar.


You remember a warmth and a drifting. Stars, stars, stars and a crash and screams and, finally, silence. Wake up, wake up, wake up dear one, our new savior, our sister. When you stand up, you feel a sense of otherness in the air. The smells here are unfamiliar. The colors before your eyes are unfamiliar. The gravity pressing upon you is unfamiliar. You do not remember sleeping. They give you a weapon, a simple bow and a spell to summon magical arrows, and say that you must help defend your new home. You must wander this world, still drunk on the crash and terrified of it all. This crazy, bloody green rock with diseased animals and murderous neighbors. You must defend it. It is your home.

Stars, stars, stars and two suns. And there is no silence anymore. A world filled with impossibly tall talking trees and impossibly small talking people, and everyone and everything between. Your best friend is an animal of a species you barely understand. A creature with three heads and blue fur and red eyes. It sits when you ask and eats when you ask and kills when you ask. They say that the bond between a hunter and its pet is one of the strongest in the world. That the two understand each other and connect to each other like no other. That would explain why you kill on command, now, too.

Stars, stars, stars, and your new neighbors love fireworks and parties and drinking and fighting. They like to watch you fire your arrows at target dummies and show off your prowess. They challenge you to duels and laugh when they lose and ask for another bout. They speak of old war stories that haunt you and bring you back to the drink you are now grateful for, even though it used to burn your belly and make you feel guilty. You look down on them all, because you are so tall. Yet every day you have less and less of a reason to look down upon them. Their level is so close to yours now.

"Aid us!" "Save us!" "Fear us!" "Stay away from us!" "Worship us!"

You see the old stars in your sleep and dream of falling down into the earth and burning, burning, burning in the fires of the life of this world. A thousand titles and a thousand honors and thousand factions and a thousand enemies and a thousand, thousand dead. You could never save them all. Never stop them all from fighting and hating and dying.

Run, run, run and never stop because there is no end to this world. They throw wonders at you. Winged reptiles the size of starships that breathe fire. Castles filled with ornate statuary and portraits of the dead and forgotten books and scheming politicians. Forges the size of trees and sweaty small people and elemental terrors. Forests that keep their own secrets and burrows full of the screaming damned and denizens of every temperament and every clime. Old enemies hiding behind new masks. Portals to paradises and ancient, forbidden lands. Whirlpools the size of castles, with screaming talking lizards and snakes and volcanoes.

Burn, blaze, rampage and wonder at the fear you see in the eyes of your foes as you strike them down in a killing rage you never possessed before you came to this world. This shattered place. Your furry friend licks blood off his muzzles and eyes you, awaiting orders. Your armor is heavy, dusty, dirty, bloody, dented from swords, arrows, fists, claws, jaws, magic.

Blood, blood, blood and you wonder how this is better than what was. What you escaped. The dark ones, the cursed, the damned, the betrayers only wanted your body as cannon fodder. This world asks for your soul, your heart. Through its greenery and oceans and mysteries and beauties, it asks for such things. It asks, it begs, it demands. Mad Elves and mad elementals and mad old gods and mad dragons and two-headed ogres and vanishing islands and all of it is some storyteller's fancy and could never be real but it is, it is and this is your duty, your life, your dream, your nightmare.

These stars, their stars, our stars… Where have they gone? You lost them so long ago and many of us seem keen on forgetting them. In our moments of weakness, we wonder what it would be like to run away again, as we did before. But this is your home. This is our home. Protect it. There is nowhere else to run.


End file.
